Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with cardiologist and author of Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience, Dr. Pim van Lommel. During the interview Dr. van Lommel explains how he began his research, and how what he learned from his patients led him to a personal transformation, “I started to ask my patients who survived cardiac arrest if they could remember something of the period of unconsciousness. To my big surprise, out of 50 patients asked, 12 of them told me about their NDEs. This was the start of my scientific curiosity, how could people have an enhanced consciousness when they are unconscious, when the heart doesn’t work, and there is no breathing, and their brain has stopped functioning?” Van Lommel continues, “When you have spoken to patients who have had a near-death experience, their emotions, their reluctance to share their experience with you… it’s so honest. You just believe them because they’re so honest. You get convinced that there is more than what we can see, what we can measure.”

Dr. van Lommel also discusses how his controversial findings have been accepted by the medical community, “The gap is not as big as you presume. It just looks that way because the Skeptics are very active. The Skeptics have their own truth and they don’t listen to somebody else who has a different opinion. So there’s a gap and there will always be a gap. There is no discussion possible with Skeptics because they have the truth. But a lot of physicians are a little bit more open, but they won’t write articles. They won’t write or tell about it in public. I know some physicians who have had a near-death experience. They said to me and wrote to me that, ‘what happened to me now I’ve always said this is impossible, and now it happened to me.'”

The Skeptiko interview with Dr. Pim van Lommel (audio and transcript) is available at: http://www.skeptiko.com/upload/skeptiko-119-pim-van-lommel.mp3

About Skeptiko Skeptiko.com is the first scientifically oriented Podcast exploring new research in controversial areas of science such as telepathy, psi, parapsychology, near-death-experience, psychic detectives, medium communication, reincarnation, and after-life encounters. Each episode features open, honest debate on new scientific discoveries. The show includes interviews with top research scientists and their critics.